Matthew D. Lassiter

Matthew D. Lassiter is an associate professor of history and of urban and regional planning at the University of Michigan, where he teaches courses about modern U.S. history, urban/suburban history, political history, and the wars on crime and drugs. He is the author of The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (2006), winner of the Southern Regional Council’s Lillian Smith Book Award. His Journal of Urban History article, “The Suburban Origins of ‘Color-Blind’ Conservatism: Middle-Class Consciousness in the Charlotte Busing Crisis,” was republished in The Best American History Essays 2006 (2006). He is also a coeditor of The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism (2010) and The Moderates’ Dilemma: Massive Resistance to School Desegregation in Virginia (1998). His current book project is “The Suburban Crisis: The Pursuit and Defense of the American Dream.”